Sony will not support the UK's would-be IPTV standard, YouView, the company's UK chief has revealed.
Speaking at the Intellect Consumer Electronics Conference in London yesterday, Gildas Pelliet, MD of Sony UK and Ireland, said the company will not plug YouView into the Bravia Internet Video service built into many of the firm's …

Sony

For now

All it really confirms is they won't be a early adopter. If they manage to get Youview right, then somewhere down the road Sony will end up having to support it. If they get it wrong, we'll be stuck with the tyranny of manufacturers plowing their own furrows.

Sony says no "for now"

I just want....

... a fucking telly or STB with a browser in it! The manufacturers are intent on building walled gardens of content and resisting attempts to create unrestricted access to content that is available on your PC. The hobbling of GoogleTV by content providers is a good example.

If you just had a basic browser in your TV/STB you could access iPlayer, YouTube or any other content just as you could from your PC. This seems the obvious evolution to me. Things like IPTV seem doomed to failure in the same way as DAB radio.

you and everyone else

No paranoid content owner would ever let their content near a device with 'a basic browser' because they would argue it would be all over the internet before you can say Torrent. This is exactly why Google TV is struggling, not because the manufacturers don't want it.

That leaves 'managed' environments the only option if you want premium content. And that means everyone anywhere in the value chain will try to own you as the viewer.

Trouble is, the services currently embedded into TVs (which I wouldn't really classify as IPTV) are dreadful user experiences compared to a proper VoD service. That's where Youview promised so much, but so far as spent all its time arguing.

YouView want complete control

YouView insist on complete control.

Many people are happy with the existing Freeview/Freesat model. Freeview/Freesat provide the TV services and the underlying data for the programme guide; the TV/STB makers provide the user interface on top of that. The TV/STB makers can compete by offering "better" user interfaces, and they can easily innovate by adding new features to their products. These manufacturers just wanted an IPTV service they could add to existing Freeview/Freesat products.

YouView offers a Sky-style model: all the boxes will be completely identical and will run the YouView UI as their main user interface. There are several manufacturers who make Sky boxes. You probably didn't know that, because the "different" Sky boxes are absolutely identical. Manufacturers can't add a new feature, e.g. USB media browsing, to a Sky box because Sky's UI doesn't support it. There is no TV with integrated Sky, since Sky doesn't have a TV UI. (TVs need things like brightness/contrast controls, and they need to support HDMI inputs and legacy analogue inputs. Sky's UI doesn't have that).

Obviously, the YouView model is great for YouView and the broadcasters. But it completely destroys Sony's ability to innovate. Since all the YouView boxes are identical, people will buy the cheapest Chinese box, not the high-quality Sony box.

You can already get iPlayer and4OD

PS3

Boxee Box

You want a Boxee Box then. It has apps for YouTube, iPlayer etc., but there is also a WebKit-based browser that can do Flash video. £180 on Amazon these days.

The other alternative is a Mac Mini or net-top-type PC hooked up via HDMI. You can even run the Boxee software on it if you like, but there are other options like Front Row, XBMC or MythTV. I found driving a PC from across the living room a pain, hence the Boxee Box, but you might get on better.